Next Gen WOW

Hi all!

I decided to make this thread as a (very) brief presentation of what I want for WOW to become in the coming years. This is absolutely subjective, so I would very much like to discuss the possibility, credibility, plausability and acceptability of my ideas for the game. Plz feel free to make your opinions be know =)

Topic 1-Idea to solve the decline of the game in every aspect-

How about there was a LFR system completely different from LFD? LFD would stay the same, but LFR would be, imo, perfected. HOW u ask? By developing a track record of all of your wins in pvp and challenge mode dungeons and other things of the sort like achievements. Plus a small description of yourself as a person. You would now have a profile in LFR so you could invite everyone else that was there(like a roster). From there, you could invite people at your will and form a group with those that you liked most and those that accepted your invite.

just the cherry on the top now: In this same setting of gameplay, I would remove pvp gear and make the game be focused on FIRST: 1)questing for average gear 2) go pvp or LFD for good gear(pvp would now let you buy pve gear) and FINALLY 3) enlist yourself in raids.

Raid difficulties should be removed and become the one sole purpose of the entire game community to better themselves through improving their profiles and work together towards the same purpose, defeat bosses in raids.

Not everyone deserves or needs to see end game content as long as they are kept entertained throughout the rest of the content.

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Topic 2-Diplomacy Profession-

Think about all the possibilities this profession could bring to the game. It could make the game more dynamic as adding a Diplomacy profession to the game would enable your character to interact more with the opposite faction, as well as become involved in political affairs of the kingdoms. This fact of course, would naturally be hand in hand with a collapse of the Horde and Alliance into two new factions. But this is not mandatory for the addition of this profession. As a profession, this would avoid an excess of players to take advantage of it, since they would have to choose between being able to get other faction items and other useful professions. This would keep this profession unique and not its perks not abused.

Ideas for implementation:

Diplomatic Side:

-Grant diplomatic immunity on a temporary basis
-Enable opposite factions at high levels of diplomacy to engage with the opposite faction and complete quests on a limited basis
-Enable the ability to group with the opposite faction at 675 diplomacy on a limited basis
-Limited communication with the opposite faction (based on racial dialects)
-Daily quests related to political relations within your own faction and also with the opposite faction on a limited basis
-As an end skill, allow the creation of raids and perhaps parties of multiple faction players, but with restrictions appropriate to not make this unbalance and uncontrollable.
-allow a one off faction to become so friendly that it will accept the player into its gates and allow it to purchase faction mounts and heirlooms.

Political Side:

-Become involved with the political affairs of a kingdom within your faction, aka diplomat / member of parliament etc.
-Make decisions which will affect the look of your capital city (aka, enact clean up the streets laws, and other things that will build and tear down parts of the city, these laws / repeal of laws would increase taxes in the city (vendor fees go up and down by small %s))
-City could become trashy in parts due to not passing and enforcing laws (Note: Much of what goes on in the cities due to your diplomatic / political choices would be phased to you, but not to other players to negatively affect their preferred gameplay)
-The profession could grant vanity items, and rarely items that affect character power
-Gain a personal escort to help in pvp as well as the option to remove pvp lockout timer.

There could be all sorts of ways to level it up including mini games, daily quests, profession related drops in dungeons / monsters, secret missions, and studying the factions’ history with the help of the archeology secondary skill.

We now have 11 classes that can bring basic, essential and common buffs to the party/raid and I will deduce this situation is balanced at the moment. So, by taking the previous assumption as granted, I believe that a support spec should not interfere with these buffs but instead be worked around unique buffs that are not homogenized and don't affect the current ones. With all things considered, support specs were made to have rotations that enhance their buffs as opposed to the other classes that revolve around dealing damage or healing or taking damage with their rotations and in which the buffs are just a bonus(remember I am talking about party buffs not self-buffs).

This way, the support role would focus their rotations on providing buffs in disadvantage of damage bursts or defensive abilities etc. and limiting these to very specific benefits so that no support spec would be superior to others in more than one chapter of its abilities. Of course they would need to have basic dps and whatnot to get around doing quests in solo or survive in pvp but these would be very underpowered and secondary compared to the other classes, but should work just fine thanks to the self-supporting abilities, anyway.
As a way of integrating the support spec in raids and dungeons and as I explained before, each support spec would bring unique benefits to the team, but since these benefits are limited to a short range of players due to not only the limit of targets but also the allies’ own specifications and unless the team consists only in either melee dps or only ranged dps or magic dps or slow plate wearing dps etc., a good pair or trio of different support specs will always be a good help. In LFR/D, this problem does not even present itself in my opinion, as its integration on LFR/D is easily manageable by making a requirement for support specs in a party and because a support spec would be useful in challenge modes and heroic dungeons.

The second part of the support integration in the game, is that each spec has its specific role in a party/raid because they are good at doing one thing and bad at the rest. Bringing dps brings damage but cannot help in anything else. Bringing healers can guarantee the survival of the team, but not the death of your enemies. As tanks go, we can count on them to take the damage and get the attention of the enemies but the rest is up for everyone else to do. As a support spec, the only thing it can affect the game is in supporting, whether it be by actively participating in the dps conflicts, staying aside and stepping in only when the tank has been mind controlled or worse, or help the healer by improving its range and/or effectiveness, but obviously it cannot compete with the healing, dpsing or damage mitigation of others, which is a good thing, as it keeps things balanced.

The third advantage of a support spec in wow is, again, its help in filling the missing buffs that I mentioned before as the common ones and, with some mastery and skill, improve either the dps or the tank or the healer. As I said, a support spec's range of skills is very limited in terms of classes so they do not bring buffs that can benefit the entire party in equal effectiveness so it means players would not just limit themselves to passively bringing the buffs while sitting back and watch the others do their parts.

Fourthly, a support spec works good in various other games, so why not take what's good from these games and add it to WOW?

Fifthly and Finally, I think this would shake the game up and be really cool to play with and against.

Some quotes from previous discussions on the subject which I think may help my case =P:

Originally Posted by Zamalamin

The Archon can buff allies and debuff enemies, but it is not a chore at all which stops them from being a buff bot. They are a DPS that sacrifices some of their damage on the meters to add effects to their spells such as "Enemy takes X damage and loses Y armor for Z seconds".

<-- This is a good example of how a support role could work in Wow. while a dps would directly damage the enemy for say, 4000 damage, the supporter would deal 2000 damage directly but leave debuffs that if exploited would reach 4000 damage or even more.[COLOR="red"]

Originally Posted by DonQShot

support role can perform dps effectively to a point where only through its support skills will the team be able to achieve the same dps as if it would be a dps spec instead.

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Topic 4- Realist/Heavier Ambient-

I just thought if I posted this idea I could perhaps understand more about wow...
So, her is my idea. Why not implement diablo's game engine, in particular, the npc's behavior scripts, in WOW? Think about, while you were doing a couple of quests, raids or dungeons, the npc's would be programmed to instead of just reacting to your presence near them, make premeditated actions? Like in diablo or even the game Counter strike, the bot's are sometimes more challenging to play than real people. And in Diablo series, you get attacked by organized groups or even ambushed and you go like: OHOOOOHHH SHIIIT and jump on your chair lol. I think it's one of those things all great games have so why not WOW?
I really wish that Wow could be more like diablo and dragon age and just have random enemies and events come from nowhere, specially in dungeons and raids. This type of environment where a class's unique traits could be explored far deeply then the mere damage dealing, healing and tanking facerolls that currently mandate. that's what I would work for if I was of Blizz at least.

I have thought about this many times over the recente year and discussed it here several times already.
I think this is a much needed change to the "you're either with us or against us" that the allience vs horde conflito has been dragging on over the years. New factions I say! Allow the world of warcraft to grow as a dynamic and organic social system instead of just forever stuck in time and space on this never ending war...

The addition of new factions could be done with the least of problems. They could be new factions coming from the other side of Azeroth, they could come from other worlds or my personal favourite, a split horde while the deserters founded a new faction ^^.

The addition of new factions would sprout the life back into the "world environment", creating new faction specific quest that would have as the objective to gain superiority over other contending factions. Ie: "a questgiver from your faction requires you to go kill a guard in another faction's town"- this and other sort of quests tagged with the profession diplomacy would offer a political side to the game and evolve the social ecosystem which is in need of a dire "maturement"
.
In fact, this statement makes even more sense to me because as of me being a veteran player I would like to see something different and new in this game. But this does not mean I am tired of raiding at all! In fact I have been playing this game for so long and still don't have a lvl 90 nor have been to a BC raid yet. I just say this to prove my point about the first topic.

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Topic 6-Player Instanced Housing-

This feature ought to be in the making for some time now or if not then I just don't know what Blizz is thinking.
It's not like one extra 500 mb or 1 Gb at worst(which is what each instanced house would weight in the pc) will cause player's old computers to crash. It would expand even more the immersion in the world, allowing players to display their trophies(back to topic 1), have servant npcs, host parties, raid meetings and even play dangerous and ilegal games(I'm thinking wow poker with real Money and item betting allowed ^^).
Plus, another secondary skill and professions would be added in order to create the furniture. You know it, its woodcutting profession and crafting secondary skill!

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Topic 7-New classes, new game-

Time to Forget about the balance demon... it's undermining the players and the game. It is Impossible. It is an uthopia and specially now after Blizz is working to remove the rotations from specs so its really really hard to come into a total damage/healing/mitigation equation. This really messes up the balancing system because you see pvp armour in pve combats which is not what it is intended for and sometimes is either OP or UP. And it only serves to confuse the noob players even more.
If, and this brings me back to topic 1, pvp was integrated in the pve leveling without its own gear, then Blizz would have one less thing to worry about.

So just keep adding new classes because all of them appeal to someone's heart more than the other and this also helps casuals become subscribers =)

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Topic 8-Lineage and your own path option-

This type of system is what Star Wars has that gets their subscribers going, ever since what is for me the best rpg ever, SWKOTOR.

If Wow added a system that allowed players to make decisions instead of we being inadvertedely "guided" through their content, thus giving the player the choice and responsability for their actions, it would supress the constant need for new content, which I see as a catch 22. It would also, imo, noursih player interaction because players would be far too busy discussing their choices, their unique content(dungeons mainly, not raids), their unique equipment and glyphs and all the things that atm are accessible to all, at the same time, with the same difficulty and the same grind.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------Conclusion: This is just my personal view on how I would like wow to become so anyone is welcome to share their ideas, suggestions or any complainements =). TY

Basically the OP is asking for a more sandboxy MMO than the "theme park MMO" that WoW is in it's current state.
People seem to have a growing interest in sandbox MMOs lately and less interest in the 'theme park MMO' formula because they've already been there, done that with WoW.

Let me show you the features of a recent Pay-2-Play Sandbox MMO, Darkfall: Unholy War:

1. No character leveling. Only leveling of your skills (woodcutting, harvesting, swords, fire spells, archery, crafting), you decide how you build your character and what his specialties are. Want to be a pure crafter to support your guild with gear? Go ahead. Want to be a pure fighter/healer/mage? Go ahead.

2. Guild based politics. Cities can be raided, conquered and controlled by guilds for extra resources. Pure open ended world PvP.

3. Gear. The best gear in game is made by crafters putting the resources they can gather to the best use.

4. Guild Alliances. Lots of politics going on in the game as well as social interactions between the players. Some people will quickly make strong friendships but also mortal enemies.

5. When you get killed your inventory can be looted. (But you can put your valuables in your bank in case you really don't want to lose certain items)

If you want WoW to become more sandboxy, above are probably a list of features they might want to try out or implement to begin with in one way or the other.

I decided to make this thread as a (very) brief presentation of what I want for WOW to become in the coming years. This is absolutely subjective, so I would very much like to discuss the possibility, credibility, plausability and acceptability of my ideas for the game. Plz feel free to make your opinions be know =)

Topic 1-Idea to solve the decline of the game in every aspect-

How about there was a LFR system completely different from LFD? LFD would stay the same, but LFR would be, imo, perfected. HOW u ask? By developing a track record of all of your wins in pvp and challenge mode dungeons and other things of the sort like achievements. Plus a small description of yourself as a person. You would now have a profile in LFR so you could invite everyone else that was there(like a roster). From there, you could invite people at your will and form a group with those that you liked most and those that accepted your invite.

just the cherry on the top now: In this same setting of gameplay, I would remove pvp gear and make the game be focused on FIRST: 1)questing for average gear 2) go pvp or LFD for good gear(pvp would now let you buy pve gear) and FINALLY 3) enlist yourself in raids.

Raid difficulties should be removed and become the one sole purpose of the entire game community to better themselves through improving their profiles and work together towards the same purpose, defeat bosses in raids.

Not everyone deserves or needs to see end game content as long as they are kept entertained throughout the rest of the content.

That's the kind of mentality that ruins the community. I pay for WoW. I deserve, if I put the time into it, to see everything there is. Who are you to tell me what I deserve and don't deserve? And to limit LFR queues by grouping only with people you like? No. That would make queues so sickeningly long that no one would play it.

Originally Posted by DonQShot

Topic 2-Diplomacy Profession-

Think about all the possibilities this profession could bring to the game. It could make the game more dynamic as adding a Diplomacy profession to the game would enable your character to interact more with the opposite faction, as well as become involved in political affairs of the kingdoms. This fact of course, would naturally be hand in hand with a collapse of the Horde and Alliance into two new factions. But this is not mandatory for the addition of this profession. As a profession, this would avoid an excess of players to take advantage of it, since they would have to choose between being able to get other faction items and other useful professions. This would keep this profession unique and not its perks not abused.

Ideas for implementation:

Diplomatic Side:

-Grant diplomatic immunity on a temporary basis
-Enable opposite factions at high levels of diplomacy to engage with the opposite faction and complete quests on a limited basis
-Enable the ability to group with the opposite faction at 675 diplomacy on a limited basis
-Limited communication with the opposite faction (based on racial dialects)
-Daily quests related to political relations within your own faction and also with the opposite faction on a limited basis
-As an end skill, allow the creation of raids and perhaps parties of multiple faction players, but with restrictions appropriate to not make this unbalance and uncontrollable.
-allow a one off faction to become so friendly that it will accept the player into its gates and allow it to purchase faction mounts and heirlooms.

Political Side:

-Become involved with the political affairs of a kingdom within your faction, aka diplomat / member of parliament etc.
-Make decisions which will affect the look of your capital city (aka, enact clean up the streets laws, and other things that will build and tear down parts of the city, these laws / repeal of laws would increase taxes in the city (vendor fees go up and down by small %s))
-City could become trashy in parts due to not passing and enforcing laws (Note: Much of what goes on in the cities due to your diplomatic / political choices would be phased to you, but not to other players to negatively affect their preferred gameplay)
-The profession could grant vanity items, and rarely items that affect character power
-Gain a personal escort to help in pvp as well as the option to remove pvp lockout timer.

There could be all sorts of ways to level it up including mini games, daily quests, profession related drops in dungeons / monsters, secret missions, and studying the factions’ history with the help of the archeology secondary skill.

No to the "collapse" of the factions, but yes to the idea. I've always loved the idea of defecting or working with the other side. It happens in the real world, why not WoW?

Originally Posted by DonQShot

I just thought if I posted this idea I could perhaps understand more about wow...
So, her is my idea. Why not implement diablo's game engine, in particular, the npc's behavior scripts, in WOW? Think about, while you were doing a couple of quests, raids or dungeons, the npc's would be programmed to instead of just reacting to your presence near them, make premeditated actions? Like in diablo or even the game Counter strike, the bot's are sometimes more challenging to play than real people. And in Diablo series, you get attacked by organized groups or even ambushed and you go like: OHOOOOHHH SHIIIT and jump on your chair lol. I think it's one of those things all great games have so why not WOW?
I really wish that Wow could be more like diablo and dragon age and just have random enemies and events come from nowhere, specially in dungeons and raids. This type of environment where a class's unique traits could be explored far deeply then the mere damage dealing, healing and tanking facerolls that currently mandate. that's what I would work for if I was of Blizz at least.

There is a big reason why we don't do that. The way the engine works (to conserve resources) is to despawn mobs and items that are not in view of anyone at any given time, and then recreate them as people get closer (which is why lag can break this). D3 is instanced for you but it's not like the entire game is populated at all times. Only the area you're in is.

I wouldn't mind more random events, though. I posted a thread a little bit back about having random instanced "super quests" that people could stumble across that spawned randomly around the server.

warcraft lore NEEDS a single player game, RTS or otherwise to get new lore going. I found MMO terrible support to create lore, and passable support to exploit existing lore (not the guy from tankspot).

That's the kind of mentality that ruins the community. I pay for WoW. I deserve, if I put the time into it, to see everything there is. Who are you to tell me what I deserve and don't deserve? And to limit LFR queues by grouping only with people you like? No. That would make queues so sickeningly long that no one would play it.

one could argue that LFR does remove the "magic", the discovery of new boss fight, and progress story (if there is any story in raid)

typically, unless gated, you can clear the raid on the very first day it's available on LFR. From this moment onward, LFR become what raiders calls "farm status" raid. You basically finish progression day one, and now just farm for gear, mat, rep, whatever is farmable.

i don't know about you but for me progression raid are fun, even wiping 20 times a night is fun (if we progress). Farming raid are okish if you need something, and really boring if you don't.

so i do think that LFR needs some fundamental rethinking, not necessarily removal.

Rating people by success or failure in random or non-organised groups is simply unfair.
Other party/raid members can have varying amounts of skill, or simply in the case of battlegrounds not give a damn about the end result.
Any attempt to rate or score people has so far been a failure, and it will continue to be.

If you want to judge people, talk to them.
Not expect some UI or number to do that for you.
That is exactly what the problem with Gearscore and similar has always been.

The problem with LFR is that it should only be an option for either the insufficiently skilled or too time constrained.
It should not be attractive to those who are perfectly able to, and are raiding normal or heroic difficulties.
Therefore it should not simply be an additional raid, but an optional difficulty.
It needs the same lockout.

That's the kind of mentality that ruins the community. I pay for WoW. I deserve, if I put the time into it, to see everything there is. Who are you to tell me what I deserve and don't deserve? And to limit LFR queues by grouping only with people you like? No. That would make queues so sickeningly long that no one would play it.

No to the "collapse" of the factions, but yes to the idea. I've always loved the idea of defecting or working with the other side. It happens in the real world, why not WoW?

There is a big reason why we don't do that. The way the engine works (to conserve resources) is to despawn mobs and items that are not in view of anyone at any given time, and then recreate them as people get closer (which is why lag can break this). D3 is instanced for you but it's not like the entire game is populated at all times. Only the area you're in is.

I wouldn't mind more random events, though. I posted a thread a little bit back about having random instanced "super quests" that people could stumble across that spawned randomly around the server.

No, what ruins the community is when people say they pay money they should be able to kill Ra-den without figuring out hes not impossible for them to reach, they just have to put time into the game. its not that people shouldnt be able to see end game, its that people shouldnt be able to see it if they dont try.

FYI paying for a game gets you the game, it never finishes the game for you...

WoW used to have more intelligent AI but they lobotomized it when the murlocs started beating the hell out of the casuals.

Some of your ideas are interesting.

And they never left orgrimmar and stormwind since hahaha!
But now seriously, I consider myself a veteranl casual not a casual how we know them there are a lot now and how I cal them noob casuals. These type of casuals don't like to explore the game, nor (mis)adventure. All they know is the end tier content. I on the other hand, have been playing since 2005 and never had a subscription and never gotten over lvl 65 lol. But I can assure u i have experienced great things in this game and I've got the items, pets, companions and achievemnets to prove it and I never stoped lovong the game.

---------- Post added 2013-05-12 at 04:11 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Anarchor

Basically the OP is asking for a more sandboxy MMO than the "theme park MMO" that WoW is in it's current state.

YES XD! A sandbox mmorpg could be a good definition for my type of WOW =). Just like SWTOR in the way that you still have the main content but with many different paths to get there.

Let me show you the features of a recent Pay-2-Play Sandbox MMO, Darkfall: Unholy War:

1. No character leveling. Only leveling of your skills (woodcutting, harvesting, swords, fire spells, archery, crafting), you decide how you build your character and what his specialties are. Want to be a pure crafter to support your guild with gear? Go ahead. Want to be a pure fighter/healer/mage? Go ahead.

2. Guild based politics. Cities can be raided, conquered and controlled by guilds for extra resources. Pure open ended world PvP.

3. Gear. The best gear in game is made by crafters putting the resources they can gather to the best use.

4. Guild Alliances. Lots of politics going on in the game as well as social interactions between the players. Some people will quickly make strong friendships but also mortal enemies.

5. When you get killed your inventory can be looted. (But you can put your valuables in your bank in case you really don't want to lose certain items)

If you want WoW to become more sandboxy, above are probably a list of features they might want to try out or implement to begin with in one way or the other.

Oh yh, this looks really sweet ^^. I will have to check it out. Thax for the tip m8 =)
My question is: Is there main content in this game, like a common enemy or smthing?

That's the kind of mentality that ruins the community. I pay for WoW. I deserve, if I put the time into it, to see everything there is. Who are you to tell me what I deserve and don't deserve? And to limit LFR queues by grouping only with people you like? No. That would make queues so sickeningly long that no one would play it.

Well I only meant it in a good way. Why does everybody feel like they HAVE to see the end contente? that was my question. I pay as well and I'm not bothered to see the end contente of mop. I am still clearing raids in TBC for the first time. They are just as fun as the mop ones for someone who hasn't been to pandaria.

No to the "collapse" of the factions, but yes to the idea. I've always loved the idea of defecting or working with the other side. It happens in the real world, why not WoW?

not both faction.Just the horde ^^. Its about time that we had the true wild sided horde and the forsaken and belves had their own faction like a new confederation or smthing.

There is a big reason why we don't do that. The way the engine works (to conserve resources) is to despawn mobs and items that are not in view of anyone at any given time, and then recreate them as people get closer (which is why lag can break this). D3 is instanced for you but it's not like the entire game is populated at all times. Only the area you're in is.

I wouldn't mind more random events, though. I posted a thread a little bit back about having random instanced "super quests" that people could stumble across that spawned randomly around the server.

Hmm ok. But couldn't then they just trigger the mobs to attack you when you were near of that particular area? And yh I read your thread, and I think that that too would be a good addition =)